Yesterday was a sweet, sweet day.

It all started with a nice hot bowl of oats, infused with egg whites and chia seeds, topped with bananas and gingerbread granola.

A little while later my neighbor brought over a box of giant cupcakes that were oh so moist.

I went for the lemon flavored cupcake in the upper right corner.
mmm.

It was also my dad’s birthday yesterday.

And in my family the birthday boy (or girl) gets to choose what and where they want to eat dinner. My dad chose to have a home cooked meal of steak and fries along with a nice bottle of wine and so thats exactly what the birthday boy got.

(This particular winery has an artist design it’s label each year and this one just happens to be one of my favorites. How cute is that lamb?)

As for the cake…because there is always cake. I’m usually the one who bakes the cake for a birthday, but my sister decided she would give it a whirl this time. This is the first thing she’s every baked from scratch, and I’d have to say it turned out pretty good.

It’s a carrot cake as thats my dads favorite flavor. It also just happens to be Easter on Sunday so i’d say the cake is extra festive. There was just one little incident that freaked us out at first. When we sliced the cake there were green specks everywhere.

The carrots had turned green. It’s kinda freaky looking, but we soon figured out that it was due to the imbalance of the baking soda. Either it wasn’t mixed well enough, and/or the addition of 1/4 cup pineapple puree messed up the ph balance of the cake. Regardless, the cake was super moist and complemented the fluffy frosting.

If anyone needs a good carrot cake recipe, my sister used this one.  Promise yours won’t turn out green! The sis made a couple changes which is most likely what lead to the color change. She reduced the sugar to 1 & 1/4 cup, subbed 1/2 cup oil for coconut oil b/c she ran out of veg oil, and add 1/4 cup pineapple puree.  But if you just so happen to want green carrots, feel free to add the pineapple

We didn’t use the frosting from the recipe and instead just made our own.

Fluffy Cream Cheese Frosting

- 1 block light cream cheese
- 1 tub whipped cream cheese
- 1 and 3/4 cup confectioners sugar
- 1 tub defrosted cool whip (or trader joes house whip)

Cream together room temperature cream cheese and confectioners sugar. Fold in cool whip. Store in fridge covered with saran wrap until ready to use. When ready to use, allow for it to defrost on the counter for 10 mins before frosting cake. 

And now I’m doing some last minute packing as I’m heading off to Seattle in a couple hours for a fun girls weekend. I haven’t been there in nearly 10 years and this time I get to return as a foodie(!). I’m really excited to visit Pikes Place, take a barre class, eat out, and just spend time with friends and enjoy the city.

Hope everyone has a wonderful Easter weekend!

What’s something sweet you’ve eaten recently?
Have you ever had green carrots in your cake?
What do you have planned for Easter weekend? 

bonjour!

i had this post partially written yesterday, but i was running on about 4 hours of sleep in 34-ish hours {i couldn’t fall alseep on the plane! grr}, so i could barely keep my eyes open and around 1am I decided to call it quits and finish it up today.

We arrived in Paris around 9:30am yesterday morning {thursday} and our day ended up being pretty low key consisting mainly of food and a tiny bit of exploring.

***

vegetarian salad for lunch

arc de triomphe + eiffel tower in the distance

parisian streets

even random little streets always look so beautiful at night

dinner @ Le Bar à Huîtres

snazzy ipad menus

butter, foie, oil & salts

 seafood platter

skate + veggies

darth vader chocolate cake

  

i’m hoping there’ll be some macarons in my future

haaaaaappy first day of november!
i can’t believe I just said that. we’re officially entering the holiday season and before we know it…BAM. it’s 2013.

*deeeep breath*

ok. lets not get ahead of ourselves and get through the present first.

I hope everyone had a wonderful halloween yesterday.
{thinking of those of you out east! – here’s how to help hurricane sandy victims.}

Halloween for me has always also been my moms birthday so it’s always a guaranteed fun day.

I got into the holiday spirit early in the morning by baking up a batch of pumpkin muffins.

And also proceeded to eat about half the fruit from an edible arrangement my sister sent to my mom. oops.

One of the things I love most about Halloween are the fun {and creative} costumes!

How awesome is that?? lovee.
I have many many fond memories of playing mario kart as a kid.
fun times.

To celebrate my moms birthday we went out to dinner at Kenny’s Wood Fired Grill. We were originally going elsewhere, but the traffic was SO bad, we made a detour halfway there and ended up at Kennys.

Not complaining though because dinner ended up being quite marvelous.

First off we started with {giant} popovers and an order of portabella fries. Seriously, these are the biggest popovers I’ve ever laid eyes on.

{my momma & i  <3}

I debated between ordering the special of the night, cajun grilled scallops, or the ahi tuna salad. Since my mom decided she would order the scallops,

I took that as a sign to order the ahi tuna salad.

They were both deelicious. I loved that the salad included roasted cashews. A perfectly crunchy addition.

And no birthday is ever complete without something sweet.

{ghirardelli brownie sundae}

Dinner was early so that we could still make it back in time for trick-or-treaters. But sadly, there were none  So now there’s a ton of candy in the house. I don’t know if thats a good or bad problem to have…

Lastly, if you’re looking for a workout to kick your butt {maybe after too much halloween fun?}, i recommend this one. it’s a killerrr.

Okay, time to go pack because i’m leaving tomorrow to Cancun, Mexico for the weekend!!

toodles!

How was your Halloween? Did you get many trick-or-treaters? What was your favorite costume you saw?